.

which Johnson impressed upon his pupil. We read on, and we are bewildered. Slightingly have we spoken of Garrick, because we felt that to do what he has done with the masterpieces of Shakspere, and especially with Hamlet, was to show that he did not understand them. But there is something in this 'Oration in Honour of Shakspere,' spoken by him at Stratford in 1769, and written by him, as it is said, which shows to us that the author of that oration, or parts of that oration, was far in advance of the critical opinions of his day. Let us present a consecutive passage which immediately follows that already transcribed:"It was happy for Shakspeare, and for us, that in his time there was no example by the imitation of which he might hope to be approved. He painted nature as it appeared to his own eye, and not from a transcript of what was seen in nature by another. The genius looks not upon nature, but through it; not at the outline only, but at the differences, nice and innumerable, within it; at all that the variation of tints, and the endless combinations of light and shade, can express. As the power of perception is more, more is still perceived in the inexhaustible varieties of life; but to copy only what another has seen is to render superior perspicacity vain; and neither the painter nor the poet can hope to excel who is content to reflect a reflection, and to seek for nothing in nature which others have not found.

"But there are beauties in Shakspeare not relative-powers that do not imitate, but create. He was as another Nature: he represents not only actions that were not performed, but beings that do not exist; yet to these beings he assigns not only faculties, but character; he gives them not only peculiar dispositions, but characteristic modes of expressing them they have character, not merely from the passions and understandings, but from situation and habit; Caliban and Ariel, like Shallow and Falstaff, are not more strongly distinguished in consequence of different natures than of different circumstances and employments.

"As there was no poet to seduce Shakspeare into imitation, there was no critic to restrain his extravagance; yet we find the force of his own judgment sufficient to rein his imagination, and to reduce to system the new world which he made.

"Does any one now inquire whether Shakspeare was learned? Do they mean whether he knew how to call the same thing by several names? for learning, with respect to languages, teaches no more; learning, in its best sense, is only nature at the rebound; it is only the discovery of what is; and he who looks upon nature with a penetrating eye derives learning from the source. Rules of poetry have been deduced from examples, and not examples from rules: as a poet, therefore, Shakspeare did not need books; and in no instance in

which he needed them as a philosopher or historian does he appear ignorant of what they teach.

"His language, like his conceptions, is strongly marked with the characteristic of nature; it is bold, figurative, and significant; his terms, rather than his sentences, are metaphorical; he calls an endless multitude a sea, by a happy allusion to the perpetual succession of wave to wave; and he immediately expresses opposition by taking up arms, which, being fit in itself, he was not solicitous to accommodate to his first image. This is the language in which a figurative and rapid conception will always be expressed: this is the language both of the prophet and the poet, of native eloquence and divine inspiration.

"It has been objected to Shakspeare that he wrote without any moral purpose; but I boldly reply that he has effected a thousand. He has not, indeed, always contrived a series of events from the whole of which some moral precept may be inferred; but he has conveyed some rule of conduct, some principle of knowledge, not only in almost every speech of his dialogue, but in every incident, character, and event."

We would attempt to deprive no man of his fame; but the passage which we have just transcribed appear to us so contrary to the habits of thought which Garrick must have acquired from his theatrical practice, so opposed to the recorded opinions to which he was in the habit of looking up almost with slavish reverence, that we cannot receive the records of the Stratford Jubilee as evidence that he wrote it. What-was the manufacturer of Shakspere's plays into farces, and operas, and tragedies with moral endings, to be the first man in England to discover that Shakspere was a creator; that he lived in a world of his own creation; that the practice of art went before the rules; that the question of his learning was to be settled contrary to the way in which the pedants of criticism had settled it, by the proof that his knowledge was all-abundant; that his judgment was sufficient to rein his imagination; that he worked upon system, and was therefore an artist in the highest sense of the word; that what has been called the confusion of his metaphors was the language both of the prophet and the poet; that his moral purpose was to be collected incidentally, not only through informal speeches, but in every character and event? The beginning and the end of Garrick's oration is commonplace. Here is a flood of light shed upon the English opinion of Shakspere. Was there any man in England, at that time, whose philosophy was large enough, whose knowledge was comprehensive enough, to allow him to think thus? Was there any man in England who dared so to express himself, in the face of authorities who had so recently propounded a totally different system? There was but one

man that we can dream of, and he was Edmund Burke. We cannot think that Garrick wrote these sentences. We can hardly think that he knew the full force of what he was uttering.

It would be a dreary task to attempt to trace all that was published about Shakspere from the date of Johnson's first edition to the close of the eighteenth century. A few out of the heap of these forgotten emanations of the critical mind, the multitude of which proves the strong direction of the national admiration, may not be unprofitably noticed. Johnson, when he has dismissed Shakspere from the shackles of the unities, says, "I am almost frighted at my own temerity." He dreaded the advocates of a contrary opinion, as Eneas withdrew from the defence of Troy when he saw Neptune shaking the wall." A Neptune arrived from Scotland, in the shape of 'Cursory Remarks on Tragedy.' This work, though it dropped into cblivion, was the performance of W. Richardson, 'Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow.' A small specimen will suffice:-" With an impartiality which becomes every man that dares to think for himself, let us allow him (Shakspere) great merit as a comic writer, greater still as a poet, but little, very little, as a tragedian.

And is then poor Shakespeare to be excluded from

the number of great tragedians? He is; but let him be banished, like Homer from the republic of Plato, with marks of distinction and veneration; and may his forehead, like the Grecian bard's, be bound with an honourable wreath of ever-blooming flowers." There can be no doubt of the paternity of this production. The same Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow produced, in the same year, 'A Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of Shakespeare's Characters;' and this book has gone, with the appendage of new characters, through many editions; and is allied, moreover, to Essays on this and that Shaksperean thing, and perilous shot" indeed in 'An Essay on the Faults of Shakespeare.' We shall give no more than a sentence:-"I am inclined to believe, and shall now endeavour to illustrate, that the greatest blemishes in Shakespeare have proceeded from his want of consummate taste. Having no perfect discernment, proceeding from rational investigation, of the true cause of beauty in poetical composition, he had never established in his mind any system of regular process, or any standard of dramatic excellence." Yet this solemn person, who thinks that Shakspere had never established in his mind any system of regular process, had no perfect discernment of the true cause of beauty, has the temerity to

a

write a book of four hundred pages on his dramatic characters. Something of a very different description was produced three years after: 'An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff.' The author was Maurice Morgann, once Under Secretary of State. The book is far above the age. The author is a thinker, and one who has been taught to think by Shakspere. Take an example:"In the groups of other poets, the parts which are not seen do not in fact exist. Those characters in Shakespeare which are seen only in part are yet capable of being unfolded and understood in the whole; every part being in fact relative, and inferring all the rest." The 'Remarks on Some of the Characters of Shakespeare,' by Thomas Whately, published in 1785, is something different from the performance of the Scotch professor. What could induce his eminent relation, who republished it in 1839, to write thus?" Mr. Whately, it should be observed, is merely pointing out that such and such speeches do indicate character; not that they were, in each case, written with that design. If, then, they really are characteristic, the criticism is fully borne out, whatever may have been the design of Shakespeare. I doubt whether Shakespeare ever had any thought at all of making his personages speak characteristically. In most instances, I conceive-probably in all-he drew characters correctly, because he could not avoid it; and would never have attained, in that department, such excellence as he has, if he had made any studied efforts for it. And the same, probably, may be said of Homer, and of those other writers who have excelled the most in delineating characters." Was the 'Paul preaching at Athens,' with the Apostle characterised in his majesty, the sceptic in his doubt, and the enthusiast in his veneration, (characters marked as deeply as the Richard and Macbeth upon which the relation of the Archbishop of Dublin writes,)-was this produced by Raffaelle because he could not avoid it? We would willingly give an extract or two from this clever book, but its republication renders such unnecessary. There is one more work, and one only, to which we may point as being superior to the ordinary criticism of that age "the butterwoman's rank to market." It is Mr. Whiter's 'Specimen of a Commentary on Shakspeare,' published in 1794. We have often quoted it, which may be sufficient to mention for our present purpose.

Amidst the crowd of writers, from the middle to the end of the eighteenth century, who were adding to the mass of comment upon Shakspere, whether in the shape of essay, letter, poem, philosophical analysis, illustration, there was one who, not especially devoting himself to Shaksperean criticism, had a considerable influence in the gradual formation of a sound national taste. The 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,' by Thomas Percy,

originally published in 1765, showed to the world that there was something in the early writers beyond the use to which they had been applied by Shakspere's commentators. In these fragments it would be seen that England, from the earliest times, had possessed an inheritance of real poetry; and that he who had breathed a new life into the forms of the past, and had known how to call up the heroes of chivalry,-to

"Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage,"

was not without models of earnest passion and noble simplicity in the ancient ballads. The publication of these 'Reliques' led the way, though slowly, to the study of our elder poets; and every advance in this direction was a step towards the more extended knowledge, and the better understanding, of Shakspere himself. Percy, in one part of his first volume, collected "such ballads as are quoted by Shakespeare, or contribute in any degree to illustrate his writings." He did this with his usual good taste; and every one knows with what skill he connected in the tale of 'The Friar of Orders Grey' those "innumerable little fragments of ancient ballads" which we find dispersed through the plays of Shakspere. In his introduction to this division of his work he gives some very sensible observations upon the origin of the English stage. In the following remarks on the Histories of our poet he takes a different, and we think a juster, view of their origin and purpose than Malone and the other commentators. Although Percy puts his own opinions cautiously, if not timidly, it is clear that he had higher notions of Shakspere as an artist than those who were arrogating to themselves the merit of having made him "popular." He who holds that it is "the first canon of sound criticism to examine any work by whatever rule the author prescribed for his own observance" is not far from a right appreciation of Shakspere:-"But while Shakespeare was the favourite dramatic poet, his Histories had such superior merit, that he might well claim to be the chief, if not the only, historic dramatist that kept possession of the English stage; which gives a strong support to the tradition mentioned by Gildon, that, in a conversation with Ben Jonson, our bard vindicated his historical plays, by urging that, as he had found the nation in general very ignorant of history, he wrote them in order to instruct the people in this particular.' This is assigning not only a good motive, but a very probable reason, for his preference of this species of composition; since we cannot doubt but his illiterate countrymen would not only want such instruction when he first began to write, notwithstanding the obscure dramatic chroniclers who preceded him, but also that they would highly profit

by his admirable Lectures on English History so long as he continued to deliver them to his audience. And, as it implies no claim to his being the first who introduced our chronicles on the stage, I see not why the tradition should be rejected.

"Upon the whole, we have had abundant proof that both Shakespeare and his contemporaries considered his Histories, or Historical Plays, as of a legitimate distinct species, sufficiently separate from Tragedy and Comedy; a distinction which deserves the particular attention of his critics and commentators, who, by not adverting to it, deprive him of his proper defence and best vindication for his neglect of the unitles and departure from the classical dramatic forms. For, if it be the first canon of sound criticism to examine any work by whatever rule the author prescribed for his own observance, then we ought not to try Shakespeare's Histories by the general laws of tragedy or comedy. Whether the rule itself be vicious or not is another inquiry but certainly we ought to examine a work only by those principles according to which it was composed. This would save a deal of inpertinent criticism."

'The History of English Poetry,' by Thomas Warton, published in 1774, was another of those works which advanced the study of our early literature in the spirit of elegant scholarship as opposed to bibliographical pedantry. Warton was an ardent lover of Shakspere, as we may collect from several little poems; but he was scarcely out of the trammels of the classical school. His education had taught him that Shakspere worked without art, and indeed he held that most of the Elizabethan poets so worked:-"It may here be added that only a few critical treatises, and but one Art of Poetry' were now written. Sentiments and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of composition; nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capriciousness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception. And this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction; a circumstance, by the way, that greatly contributed to give the flowing modulation which now marked the measures of our poets, and which soon degenerated into the opposite extreme of dissonance and asperity. Selection and discrimination were often overlooked. Shakespeare wandered in pursuit of universal nature. The glancings of his eye are from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. We behold him breaking the barriers of

imaginary method. In the same scene he descends from his meridian of the noblest tragic sublimity to puns and quibbles, to the meanest merriments of a plebeian farce. In the midst of his dignity he resembles his own Richard II., the skipping king, who sometimes, discarding the. state of a monarch,

'Mingled his royalty with carping fools.'

He seems not to have seen any impropriety in the most abrupt transitions, from dukes to buffoons, from senators to sailors, from counsellors to constables, and from kings to clowns. Like Virgil's majestic oak

Quantum vertice ad auras Ætherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.'"

All this is prettily said; but it would not have been said if Warton had lived half a century later. Scattered about the periodical 'Essayists' are many papers on Shakspere, worth consulting by the student, which, if not very valuable in themselves, indicate at least the progress of opinion. Joseph Warton, in 'The Adventurer,' where he reviews The Tempest and Lear, is a great stickler for the unities. Mackenzie, in 'The Mirror,' has a higher reverence for Shakspere, and a more philosophical contempt for the application of the ancient rules to works having their own forms of vitality. Cumberland, in 'The Observer,' contrasts Macbeth and Richard III.; and he compares Shakspere with Eschylus in a way which exhibits the resources of his scholarship and the elegance of his taste. All the fragmentary critical opinions upon Shakspere, from the time of Johnson's Preface to the end of the century, exhibit some progress towards the real faith; some attempt to cast off not only the authority of the ancient rules of art, but the smaller authority of that lower school of individual judgment, which the Shaksperean commentators had been propping up, as well as they could, upon their own weak shoulders. Coleridge has well described their pretensions to authority:- "Every critic, who has or has not made a collection of black-letter books,-in itself a useful and respectable amusement,-puts on the seven-league boots of self-opinion, and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme judge, and, blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters of Niagara; and determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to receive." Such a critic was Mr. Francis Douce; who has been at the pains of making a formal essay 'On the Anachronisms and some other Incongruities of Shakspeare.' The words by which Mr. Douce describes these are, of course, "absurdities," "blunders," "distortions of reality," negligence," "absurd vio

lations of historical accuracy." Some concessions are, however, made by the critic:-"His bestowing the epithet of gipsy on Cleopatra is whimsical; but may, perhaps, admit of defence." It is perfectly clear that a man who talks thus has not the slightest philosophical comprehension of the objects of Art, and the mode in which Art works. The domain of the literal and the ideal is held to be one and the same. It is truly said of the formative arts, by a living painter who knows the philosophy of his own art as much as he excels in its practice, that ፡፡ a servile attention to the letter of description, as opposed to its translatable spirit, accuracy of historic details, exactness of costume, &c., are not essential in themselves, but are valuable only in proportion as they assist the demands of the art, or produce an effect on the imagination. This may sufficiently explain why an inattention to these points, on the part of great painters (and poets, as compared with mere historians), has interfered so little with their reputation."

One of the critics upon Shakspere has sought to apologize for his anachronisms or "absurdities" by showing the example of the greatest of painters, that of Raffaelle, in the 'Transfiguration:'

"The two Dominicans on their knees are as shocking a violation of good sense, and of the unities of place, of time, and of action, as it is possible to imagine." It is clear that Martin Sherlock, who writes thus, did not understand the art of Raffaelle. This was the spirit of all criticisin upon painting and upon poetry. The critic never laboured to conceive the great prevailing idea of "the maker" in either art. He had no central point from which to regard his work. The great painters, especially in their treatment of religious compositions, had their whole soul permeated with the glory and beauty of the subjects upon which they treated. Their art was in itself a worship of the Great Infinite Idea of beauty and truth. The individual forms of humanity, the temporary fashions of human things, were lifted into the region of the universal and the permanent. The Dominicans on their knees in the Transfiguration' were thus the representatives of adoring mortality during the unfolding to the bodily sense of heavenly glory. Who can see the anachronism, as it is called, till a small critic points it out? Art changes the very nature of those elements by which the imagination is affected. She touches them, and the things are propertied for her use. What is mean, separately considered, is harmonized by her into greatness; what is rude, into beauty; what is low, into sublimity. We fear that it was a want of comprehending the high powers and privileges of Art, whether in poetry or painting, Preface to Kugler's History of Painting,' by C. L. Eastlake, Esq., R.A.

that made the 'Shakspere Gallery,' which, towards the end of the last century, was to raise up an historic school of painting amongst us, a lamentable failure. The art of painting in England was to do homage to Shakspere. The commercial boldness of a tradesman built a gallery in which the Reynoldses, and Wests, and Romneys, and Fuselis, and Northcotes, and Opies, might consecrate, by the highest efforts of painting, the inspiration which was to be borrowed from Shakspere. The gallery was opened; the works were munificently paid for; they were engraved; the text of Shakspere was printed in larger type than the world had ever seen, to be a fit vehicle for the engravings. People exclaimed that Italy was outdone. With half-a-dozen exceptions, who can now look upon those works and not feel that the inspiration of Shakspere was altogether wanting? It is not that they violate the proprieties of costume, which are now better understood; it is not that we are often shocked by the translation of a poetical image into a palpable thing-like the grinning fiend in Reynolds's 'Death of Beaufort ;' but it is that the Shaksperean inspiration is not there. Lord Thurlow is reported to have said, in his coarse way, to one not wanting in talent, "Romney, before you paint Shakspere, do, for God's sake, read him." But the proper reading of Shakspere was not the fragmentary reading which Thurlow probably had in his mind. The picturesque passages are to be easily discovered by a painter's eye; but these are the things which most painters will literally translate. Shakspere is always injured by such a literal translation. Deeply meditated upon, his scenes and characters float before the mind's eye in forms which no artifices of theatrical illusion, no embodiments of painting and sculpture, have ever presented. If such visions are to be fixed by the pencil, so as to elevate our delight and add to our reverence of the great original, that result must be attained by such a profound study of the master, as a whole, as may place him in the light of the greatest of suggestive poets, instead of one whose details are to be enfeebled by a literal transcript.

We have little of importance left to notice before we reach the close of the eighteenth century, about which period we ought to rest. Opinions upon our contemporaries, except very general ones, would be as imprudent as misplaced. Perhaps we should notice in a few words the extraordinary forgeries of William Henry Ireland. We consider them as the result of the all-engrossing character of Shaksperean opinion in the days of the rivalries and controversies of Steevens and Malone, of Ritson and Chalmers :

"Take Markham's Armoury, John Taylor's Sculler, Or Sir Giles Goosecap, or proverbial Fuller;